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Watch Nigeria Vs. Germany Football Live Online: Start Time, Streaming Video Links For Rio Olympics Semifinal Match

By Nathan Francis
Published on: 03:55 PST, Aug 17, 2016

Fans can watch the Nigeria vs. Germany football match live online and see which team can play their way through to the gold medal game in the Rio Olympics and which will be fighting for bronze.

The teams meet in the semi-finals of the Rio Olympic football tournament on Wednesday, with the kickoff scheduled for 4 p.m. local time (3 p.m. ET/8 p.m. in Nigeria).

For fans who watch the Nigeria vs. Germany football match live online, there may be a few familiar faces missing, especially if this is their first viewing of the Rio Olympics tournament. Unlike the women’s side, which features the best players in the world, the men’s bracket features the best young players. The format for the Rio Olympics football tournament is Under-23 with three players allowed over the limit, which means no Toni Kroos on the German team, and many familiar faces from the Golden Eagles will be absent as well.

For the Nigerian team, the ride to the Rio Olympics has been quite the whirlwind. The team only arrived 30 hours before their opening match after getting stuck in the Atlanta airport, but they barely missed a step by winning their group and then dispatching Denmark in the quarterfinal round to set up the final four meeting with Germany.

The Dream Team 6 has a steady influence in Chelsea midfielder John Obi Mikel, ESPNFC noted. It was Mikel who objected to the team flying from Atlanta to Rio in a tiny chartered plane that would have left them cramped and fatigued, the report noted.

Mikel has also been a calming force for Nigeria on the pitch.

“There have been a lot of challenges, but every time we go onto the field, we forget about everything and make sure our fatherland comes first,” Mikel said.

Mikel has given up quite a bit for his team, including paying $4,000 of his own money to allow the team to be released from a Sao Paulo hotel last week after they were “held at ransom” over unpaid bills, OkayAfrica reported. The team was barely able to make the flight to Salvador for their next match.

The team’s financial difficulties also have them playing shorthanded, the report noted, with Stanley Dimgba and goalkeeper Yusuf Mohammed reportedly being sent home as the team has struggled to house and feed non-essential players.

Despite the setbacks, Nigeria is just 90 minutes away from setting up a potential follow-up to their 1996 gold medal. In a feature for the Evening Standard, Mikel said it would be quite an accomplishment if his team can beat Germany and assure either a gold or silver medal.

“As I said in the Evening Standard earlier this month, my dream is to win gold in Brazil. But it will be a huge boost to the rest of Team Nigeria if we beat Germany because that will at least guarantee our first medal. The country hasn’t got one yet and perhaps seeing the footballers succeed will help the others do the same.”

But in order to make it that far, Nigeria will have to beat a German squad that scored an incredible 19 goals thus far in the Rio Olympic tournament. While 10 of those did come against an entirely overmatched Fiji team, the German squad is dangerous nonetheless.

For German football fans, the match is also a chance to erase some of the heartaches from the Euro 2016 tournament, when the team bowed out in the semifinal round to eventual runner-up France. A potential gold medal would help make up for the difficult loss.

Fans who want to watch the Nigeria vs. Germany football match live online can click here for full streaming video of the match through the NBC Sports online portal. Fans watching across the world, including in Nigeria, can find a full list of broadcast partners here.

[Photo by Lee Jin-man/AP Images]

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